The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as monochrome, single collar, and full color PPCs, facsimiles, printers, and complex machines composed thereof.
General image forming apparatuses include an image carrier cylindrical in shape and capable of rotate, a charging section for uniformly charging the surface of the image carrier by corona discharge, an exposure section for exposing the image carrier to form an electrostatic latent image, a developing section for developing a toner image from the electrostatic latent image, a transfer section for transferring the toner image on the image carrier when voltage with polarity opposite of the toner image is applied thereto, and a cleaning section which comes into contact with the image carrier to remove the toner which has not been transferred by the transfer section and remained thereon.
The cleaning section has a blade which comes into contact with the image carrier to scrape off the toner on the image carrier, and a casing having the blade mounted thereon and collecting the toner scraped with the blade. The tip of the blade, which is made of an insulating material, such as polyurethane rubber, comes into contact with the image carrier and scrapes the remaining toner off the image carrier.
When a friction coefficient between the blade and the image carrier becomes high, the stress exerted on the tip of the blade may become excessively large. This leads to the phenomenon in which the tip of the blade will be chipped. In the region where the tip of the blade has been chipped, the force for bringing the blade into contact with the image carrier decreases, and therefore the remaining toner may pass through the blade to cause image failures. Problems such as squeaking and turn-up of the blade also arise.
Accordingly, in order to decrease the friction coefficient between the blade and the image carrier, a conventional image forming apparatus include a lubricant feed section which feeds a lubricant to the image carrier so as to lower the friction coefficient of the image carrier (see JP 2005-18047 A).
However, since the conventional image forming apparatus has the lubricant feed section which requires a wide space, it has been causing a problem of upsizing of the image forming apparatus.